How many of you have ever thought: "hey, I want an HV that is not only impractically large, but also bristling with turrets and impossible to move off of a planet"? If you're like me, you've probably never thought this. But never fear! For the terminally unhinged, on anyone who simply wants to spend a few hundred tons of resources on a random project, I present the SlamTek Mammoth. (Yes. This thing is an HV.) It is currently the largest HV I've ever built, easily larger than any SV I've ever built, and probably bigger than a few BAs and CVs I've built as well. It easily dwarfs my SlamTek BattleTank by a large amount, despite the BattleTank already being considered a behemoth by some. The inside is currently totally unfurnished, save a few Fuel Tanks and a Cockpit, but you can see in the screenshot that it still weighs in at a healthy 230 tons. (Mammoth (left), BattleTank (middle), and T1 Starter HV (right) for comparison) The Mammoth in front of the SlamTek HV Workshop on Zeyhines. The Mammoth was so large I had to remove not only the door to the hangar in the back to get it out, but remove the floor under it as well! The stats are hidden inside this here spoiler: Spoiler Edit: Good news! Now there's a video to go with it!
I'm in the Experimental Branch trying out making a Test Hover War Tank using the new Hover Engines & Mechanics. Spoiler: Here's a little Sneak Peek! (After the taking of this Second Pic I realized I accidentally stuck them on in the wrong Orientation by mistake & popped them off & stuck new ones on turned 180 Degrees to the Orientation I meant to do the first time. I was promptly too lazy to take a new Screenie.)
Girlfriend and I set about colonizing Oscutune. Beautiful place, love the beaches. Unfortunately, we quickly realized we'd made our home in the middle of Alien Hell. Drone base, Epsilon Weapons Factory, another Epsilon something out of view to the left, a couple more behind us to the north... that nice peninsula of sand I plopped our Spire down on turned out to be right in the middle of practically every POI on the planet. Defensive bunker was positioned to take aim at drone incursions from the base to the southwest, though I may end up placing a couple more to protect our precious piece of paradise. At least the view is spectacular. I really love Oscutune. <3
Hey all, Well, I continued my game yesterday. I thought maybe I should at least try building a CV from the new and very expensive large blocks. First though I needed to build an area to work in. My base in this start is a fairly simple one made from concrete. Going through the main entrance - protected by a Sentry Turret - onto the ground floor, sees a fuel tank, Small Generator, Med Bay, O2 Station and O2 Tank on the left. Continuing forward you come to some large windows, overlooking a small lake. Turning back to face the entrance, there's a door to the left leading to my Food Processing area. Walking through the door, one of the new vertically opening ones, sees two T2 Fridges, one for raw and one for processed food and of course a food processor. Just past these are my 27 growing plots, giving me my usual 9 Durians, 9 Tomatoes and 9 Pumpkins for canned veg. This area is windowed too, those to my left overlooking the lake, to my right a large plain and directly in front of me, part of the beach adjoining the lake. Nice. Going upstairs, via a ramp next to the door, takes me to my crafting area. Here there's a Large Constructor and six storage boxes. In the direction of the Lake is a large window, with a glass door in it. Through this door I'd extended a platform for my initial small SV to park. Back into the crafting area, there's a door heading into an area over the Food Preparation area. In here I placed two additional Large Constructors for Ore Processing. There's also a small door out onto the roof of the rest of Food Processing. So, an area to start building my CV. I decide to extend the area outside of Ore Processing, expanding the roof over Food Processing massively. I extend a short way towards the Lake, placing angled structural supports so it looked fairly nice. I then extend much further in the opposite direction towards the plain, and further away from the base. This gave me a usable amount of space for small CV construction - not that I had anywhere near enough materials yet. Now, usually at this point in the game I've already looted the Titan Wreck sections and begun stripping them down with the multi-tool. This of course gives me lots of Steel Plates and Glass. However, due to a bug in 0639 with the Titan sections, I could not do this. As this was confirmed as a bug, I decided to take to the console to force the wreck sections I'd looted and secured (drones dead, reinforcements taken care of) to be mine, so I could salvage. Doing this I started reclaiming various items, equipment and blocks getting some nice materials in the process. However, POI's are all modelled using older blocks, so I was getting a fraction of the material I should from reclaiming blocks and glass. My, somewhat cheaty but justified I feel, solution was to give myself the amount of materials I would have gotten if the POI had been updated for the new blocks. Doing this, after a lot of work reclaiming bits manually, gave me just enough to start a CV. It was late so I took a little break...and, gone midnight, Eleon release the 0640 update. This fixed the POI issue (nice) and enhanced the "Replaceblocks" command, so possibly I could "fix" the POI's in my game...sadly there's a 50 character limit in the console, and the names are too long as others found. Hopefully this will be fixed and the devs will provide some additional guidance on how we can fix POI's in our games. Anyway, back to my CV build. I'd created all the basic components, 150 large Steel Blocks (for now) and had a rough idea in my head how I wanted to proceed. This was going to be a basic, warp-capable CV, but with no provision for growing food nor docking my SV just yet. I wanted to keep it light to reduce fuel consumption, but to be able to defend its self against the odd drone (Minigun) as well as Predators at landing sites (Sentry) so I proceeded to build... Start Block down - oddly made up of the old block types, not updated yet - I build a nice cockpit of glass with good visibility. I then extend back and out to create and Engine Room with a Large T1 Generator and two T2 Fuel Tanks either side. I extend back further and add an RCS. I build up the walls slightly and build an "engine pod" either side with a fore/aft/up/down thruster in each as well as a port/starboard thruster in the appropriate pod. Next I build three rows of three wide and high concrete blocks with a one block space in between on the landing pad. There's a bug in 4.0.0 where all ships sink slowly when you're not tapping Space. This means you cannot leave a ship hovering while you work underneath it. Jumping in my skeletal CV, I pop in some Hydrogen Fuel Packs, power up, fly up and backwards to land on the concrete blocks. This CV is very nimble in its current incomplete form! Having access to the underside of the CV, I add another layer of blocks and pop some Large landing gear on, before moving the CV again and demolishing said concrete blocks. Nice. Now, I'm running a little low on Steel Plates, so I create as many blocks as I can, but not as many as I really wanted. I do however have a fair amount of Glass, so I decide to make some windows. Even the normal, non-armoured ones are pretty tough now - they should be for their material cost - but I'll be using these for internal structure. The roof of the Engine Room is entirely glass, looks good. Above this glass I decide to place the Warp Core, which looks good through the glass. I continue to build up, popping a roof of Steel over the Warp Core. I did do Glass initially, but wanted a platform for placing a turret later so changed my mind. I then begin to build back from the engine room. I place a wall to this rear section with two glass doors, add in a Medical Bay, O2 Tank and O2 Station. I construct a slope down to a small rear door, then a long, retractable, ramp to the ground. I replace the slope with Stairs, looks better, then place a large ammo box one side and two cargo boxes the other on this one-block lower level. I go up the stairs and place blocks on top of the ammo and cargo boxes, then place steps up one side. On the side without steps to it, I place a Gravity Generator and surround it by windows, on the other I place a Large Constructor. So, with my back to the med bay etc. I have a set of stairs leading down to the main entrance to the CV at the rear. Either side of this entrance are the ammo and cargo boxes. Above the entrance is my Large Constructor and Gravity Generator. Nice. I pop some diagonal windows in the roof, and finish it off with steel blocks. I add a few more blocks here and there for looks. Heading outside I place a Sentry Turret either side of the door, but placed in such a way as, between them, they have near 360 degrees of coverage, bar where the main CV mass gets in the way. I place two more at the front, either side of the main cockpit. Now I have a true 360 degree protection from Predators when I land. I jet pack to the roof, leap frogging off my Base as it's a bit high, and pop a Single Minigun Turret on the roof. While not a looker by any means, and yet to have any textures or colours applied, I'm quite pleased with this CV. It's perfectly symmetrical externally, which might upset some (you know who you are! ) but I'm happy with it. So, that's it for this evening, next time I may take it for a spin, though I really need more resources first. Actually, with the new higher material demands, I may have shot myself in the foot this time. I did a very resource-poor hard start on Akua in Single Player, and most resources are about 50% depleted already, but I don't have resource Meteorites in SP of course - they really should add that back in you know. It's nice to have a more challenging start when it comes to initially searching for resources, but once those run low, we really do need some options. Sure, I could turn up resources for an SP game, but that eliminates much of the early-game challenge that's quite enjoyable. I needed that SV in this start just to find resources - the bike wasn't enough. Anyway, that's it from me. Just thought I'd type up my somewhat mundane tail from last night. I expect I'll play a bit later this evening, but Real Life calls currently...it sucks, but at least the graphical fidelity is good...excellent FPS too Scoob.
I didn't play much yesterday as I was exercising my RL crafting skills putting some finishing touches on a brick walkway out front. It won't win any awards but it's serviceable. Made some changes to the Falcon. Doubled the number of RCS modules but it still feels a little sluggish. T2 rcs modules for SVs plzthx. Maybe even T3. Also T3 thrusters. And T4 power generators that are super efficient and cut down on fuel consumption. Worked on the castle some more. I had a small fit of inspiration. Things are progressing. Stock standard boring castle is not quite so standard or boring anymore. This pleases me.
There's room for Symmetrical AND Asymmetrical in this Game. To duel them against each other for your Gladiatorial Pleasure?
Sadly I'm having trouble getting vessels on Planets to fight each other... I might be able to get both of em to space somehow and see if they can duke it out there xD No guarantees tho...
I didn't do too much today, despite being in-game for several hours. I did a little mining, but taking care not to exhaust the deposits so I could test the Auto Miner. I have the materials to build one, but not the level yet. The slowest levelling setting in 4.0.0 is sloowwwww indeed. I did however have the level and materials to build a Repair Pad, so that's what I did. I removed a concrete block from my CV landing & construction area, plonked the RP down, drew sone little "+" (medic) signs in a cross to make it obvious where I'd put it and tested it out. My SV had taken very minor damage previously and the RP fixed that in mere seconds. The RP is a very promising addition to the game, but it needs balancing of course. It repairs fairy quickly, at least small craft, but it uses minimal power while doing so. I'd personally like to see it use more power, that way you could deploy many of them for faster repairs - not sure if it works that way currently, I only had materials for one - and an increasing power cost. Still, it's a nice addition with great promise. I took another little trip into space in my very basic SV - it has a single Gatling Gun now, which I added yesterday and forgot to mention. Because I have such Epic Skillz - or maybe the AI needs work lol - I took on a Space Drone and looted it. I also attacked the Station in Orbit over Akua, taking out two of its turrets and letting the station superstructure guard me from the other two. I then shot a hole in the bottom of the station (it needs a material upgrade to be immune to this really) entered in my space suit and took out the Core. I then proceeded to reclaim the equipment there, nicely supplementing my hoard Returning to Akua I went about a few housekeeping type activities, namely collecting Hydrogen and O2 from my H2/O2 Generators and popping some more power in them. Creating some Hydrogen Fuel packs, topping up the Fuel tanks on the Base, SV and CV and collecting some Ore the CV had been processing for me. it's while doing all this I gained a level, enabling me to build an Auto Miner. Nice. I had planned to fly off to the only two Copper deposits on the planet, with just 320 Copper between them, and deploy my AM and get out of there. There's both a Drone Base and Epsilon Somethingorother near by, so I'd need to take care. On my way there I flew near a 75% Iron Deposit I'd partially mined earlier. I stopped and decided it's likely safer to test my AM here, with out hostile POI's nearby. Planting the AM in the hole I'd previously dug, I loaded some large Promethium Fuel Packs - sadly the AM doesn't take the plentiful Hydrogen Packs I have, I think it should - and sat watching it for a bit. Hmm, one Ore every 20 seconds or so, 157 an hour apparently - I really hope this device doesn't stop working when I'm not close by...I'm sure it doesn't, cos that'd be daft. Returning to Base, I decide to have a play around with Landing Gear on my SV. I wanted to get it to dock to the side of my CV - that's supposed to be possible now, right? Anyway, I try several variations of pads - ensuring they are the right way around - and it doesn't work. I rotate my SV 90 degrees and dock on the side with the lower pads and it works just fine. Interestingly, and possibly related, my SV sinks slowly when level but is perfectly stable when on its side. Maybe the downward slide prevented the Gear from latching on. Ah well. Moving on, I decide to extend my CV with two stubby "wings" either side, my plan being that the SV, as well as a second if need be, can dock there. I do this, pop a door either side and I'm done. Works well, though the SV is exposed of course. Still, I'll not be taking this CV into Combat, so it should be fine. So, that's it. A few things achieved, more food grown etc. I was planning another trip to the moon to secure the crashed ship there, but it's right next to a very well-armed POI so I'll need better equipment first. Additionally, while the crashed ship is usually a fantastic supply of Steel Plate and Hardened Steel Plate, I'd be somewhat short-changed currently due to the Block Changed - one block reclaimed not enough to make an equivalent block, hopefully these POI's can be "replacedblock" converted to the new block classes. Anyway, that's me done for now, not so exciting lol. Scoob.
Been working a bit on the interior of the Mammoth, filling it in as best I can imagine. One big issue I didn't expect was the total lack of stairs or elevators on HVs... which makes sense honestly. But I think I've found a way to work around that particular issue BTW I am starting to wonder if the Mammoth is the biggest HV ever made in Empyrion? I've certainly never seen a larger one posted here or on the Workshop... but if anyone can find a bigger HV, by all means, let me know! Until then I'm giving the Mammoth a temporary "largest and least efficient HV" crown
Been learning to create my own custom playfields (not just the planet, the terrain, loot, POIs, enemies, etc. and then applying it to a new custom planet). I finished it today, but I'm too tired to try to get screenshots loaded here. Maybe tomorrow after work...
Hull Blocks: Ramp Top & Ramp Bottom. /Spoiler It'd be hilarious to pop that vs the Blue Team outta nowhere & Vid their Reactions to it.
Well, as you'll see in the video below, I found a more compact way Just drop one next to their base and watch the fireworks Or any Alien POI. Speaking of... I did a little more interior work on the Mammoth (though I still wouldn't call it finished), and took it on two more Fire Tests. The first was quick and uneventful, however the second was a bit more interesting. The Mammoth gets stuck (frequently) but still takes out the POI while only taking two small breaches to the hull. Oh, and the CV in the beginning is something I built in about 15 minutes so I could ferry the Mammoth about in (absolute lack of) style At the end of the video the poor bloated Mammoth was basically stuck... at that point I'd have to dig it out to get it back to the CV, most likely.
I finaly consider the larger ship i have done finished. Been working on this one for a long time. So today and just before leaving for work, its finaly done...Yet i believe a few more tweaks could be done. its suposed to be a battlecruiser. So should hunt cruisers and smaller ships and run away from battleships. Howver i noticed that most cruisers and corvette published in the workshop are far more powerful in weapons and even acceleration...so caution is required wehn selecting a target. Dont trust the name and class given, play attention to the fire power of your enemy instead. Soon i will present it on workshop. it can be used with 2 shuttle trains that run the internal lenght of the ship with several stops to shorten the travel inside the vessel. Also a escape pod/reconnaissance pod is avaible to dock inside the top of the turret of the large vassel. This ship is based on Space 1999 and linked to the Jarak ship. The battle cruiser hunted and destroyed those.
